(If you haven’t seen Groundhog Day, this video condenses it pretty nicely.)

It doesn’t help that job interviews aren’t much fun for most people, nor are they something most people do very often. But we do! Our placement specialists interview people every day for positions ranging from forklift operator to maritime engineer.

And we don’t get that Groundhog Day feeling because we do find good candidates to match our clients’ open positions. So if you’re ready to get out of the Punxatawney of hiring, contact us today.

And don’t drive angry!

Early in the month, President Obama made three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). This might not have been a big deal… had he done it when Congress was in session. But he didn’t, and a couple of business groups have already sued. The NLRB wasted no time in issuing a ruling that will probably also engender challenges from business groups: that employers cannot require employees to go through arbitration instead of the courts for workplace claims.

While the NLRB might be unpredictable, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) wants you to have some idea of what it’s planning for the next few years. So it’s posted a draft strategic plan for fiscal years 2012-2016. Happy reading! While the draft plan doesn’t mention background checks, the EEOC is continuing to monitor their use. Pepsi recently agreed to pay $3.13 million after the EEOC charged the company with discriminating against job applicants by checking their background arrest records rather than just conviction records.

Another area the EEOC is focusing on is the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), having filed at least two ADA-related lawsuits in the past few weeks. Perhaps anticipating more scrutiny from the EEOC, the U.S. Department of Education issued an advisory letter and FAQ to primary and secondary schools on compliance with the ADA. Recent cases have dealt with the specifics of the law, including whether or not obesity and migraines are covered by the ADA.

And while we’re on the subject of weight gain and pain, a recent ruling in a case about a pregnant employee who applied for Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave before she was eligible, but for a future leave during which she would be eligible, had her employment not been terminated. It’s very confusing. Good luck.

Another source of confusion continues to be Facebook (FB), and how much access employers can have to their employees’ social media activities. A United States District Court recently ruled that employers cannot “rummage at will” (great phrase!) through employees social media information if that information has been limited from public view.

And finally, we conclude with two tales of legal woe, proving that even icons can fall afoul of employment law. Chuck E. Cheese (CEC) was recently fined more than $28,000 for violating various labor regulations, including child-labor laws, in California. Meanwhile, across the country, Lady Gaga has been sued by her former assistant for working 7,168 hours of unpaid overtime… in just 13 months.

So, it’s certainly shaping up to be an interesting year, legally. Have an opinion to share on these rulings, declarations, lawsuits or challenges? Let us know in the comments!

Wait, come back!

Dealing with the employee manual is to business resolutions what cleaning out the garage is to personal resolutions: you know it needs doing because who knows what-all is in there by now, but it seems like such a tedious task and there are always more important things to do, and really, it’s not that important, anyway.

Until there’s some legal action involving your employees. (The garage equivalent is a leaking hot water heater or a trapped skunk.) Then, a clear, well-written, up-to-date employee manual becomes the most important thing standing between you and a horrible mess.

So let’s dive in and revamp that sucker.

Step 1: Read your existing employee manual. If the thought of doing so makes you long for dental surgery, think of how your employees must feel about the manual. Now resolve to make it better and more accessible.

Step 2: Flag the parts that are no longer correct or out of date. Those can be corrected or simply deleted.

Step 3: Using the information you’ve learned in your SWOT analysis and metrics measurement, determine what crucial information and policies are currently lacking in your manual. Social media policies will probably comprise the bulk of the new info to fill in, as they’re the source of a lot of new legal precedents.

Step 4: Make a fairly detailed outline of your prospective revised manual, including the parts of the old one you’re keeping and the new stuff you’re adding. The outline helps ensure that there’s no overlap and that the sections of the manual make sense.

Step 5: Write it (or delegate or outsource someone to write it). Keep the language as simple and clear as possible. You’re not turning this in to your eighth-grade composition teacher, you’re hoping that people will get useful information out of it as quickly as possible. Write it to that purpose.

Step 6: Ask your legal counsel to review it and make sure it’s legally correct, comprehensive, clear and relatively bulletproof. Make revisions as necessary.

Step 7: Ask employees from across the company to review it, to make sure they find it easy to use and understand. Make revisions as necessary.

Step 8: Make it accessible online. Whether over a company intranet or via an interactive PDF, the best way to make sure your employees use the manual is to make it fast and easy to use, and that means links and clicks. Feel free to give everyone a hard copy, or assign one hard copy per department, but most of the use this manual will see is via electronic searches, and that’s as it should be.

Step 9: Make a note in your calendar to repeat the process in January 2013. Weep briefly.

Have we left out a step? Have any fun, wacky employee-manual stories to share? Let us know in the comments!

Like management guru Edward Deming said, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” For instance, it’s easy to say “We’re doing pretty well in employee retention” based on a general feeling of success in that area, but if HR data shows that your turnover rate is 30% higher than the average for your industry, that’s another story.

It’s always good to know where you stand, even if it contradicts a positive impression you’d had. For one thing, your impressions are now based in reality. And once you’re aware of a problem, you can begin figuring out ways to fix it.

So what key metrics should you be measuring?

Financial: Net cash flow, gross margins, operating margins, profit margins and SGA (sales, general & administrative) costs.

Employee: Productivity, training participation, career development and turnover.

HR: Worker’s compensation costs and claims, unemployment insurance claims, health care costs, FUTA payments.

Marketing: Marketing impacts are trickier to measure, but online marketing, including web analytics and social media mentions, can be quantified fairly easily.

Client mix: What percentage of your business does each of your top 10 clients bring in? If your client base is too dependent on one client or one industry, that’s a good indication that it’s time to diversify.

Reliance Staffing & Recruiting can help you improve many of your HR, employee and financial metrics. Contingent workers can keep your workforce flexible so you can respond to increased demand without incurring extra overhead during down times. We handle worker’s compensation, unemployment, health insurance and FUTA for our associates, so you don’t have to worry about that. And having contingent workers available can reduce the pressure on your regular workforce to keep productivity high and turnover low. Contact us today to learn more about how we can keep your metrics nice and healthy.

Are there other crucial metrics that you measure for your business? Let us know in the comments!

Of course, you can’t accurately determine where you want to go without understanding where you are right now. The classic method of doing that is performing a SWOT analysis: determining the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organization.

And while it’s always helpful to analyze your business as a whole using the SWOT method, you can break it down even further, by departments:

Customers: How are you serving them well? How could you serve them better? What new services could you offer? Who’s competing for your customers, or is your sector of the market as a whole under threat?

Employees: What are the greatest strengths of your workforce? In what areas could they use some additional training or education? Are there new ways you can energize your workforce? And are your incentives and culture strong enough to keep your employees loyal to you?

Operations: What areas are functioning efficiently, and how can you duplicate those results? What areas could use a tune-up? Are there new technological or operational developments that could further improve your efficiency? And are there also developments (price increases, legislation) that could compromise your efficiency?

Finance: Review your business’s balance sheet, cashflow and financial ratios. Which are healthy… and which aren’t? Are there ways of buying, selling, trading, leasing or refinancing that could improve your financial fitness? And are there also new or potential developments (interest rates, balloon payments due) that could harm your financial standing?

Marketing/Sales: This one might be trickier, because many businesses don’t have mechanisms in place to measure the success of marketing efforts. This article, among thousands available online, offers a good starting point for developing measurement tactics for marketing and sales. Evaluate the campaigns and tactics that have worked, and the ones that haven’t, and be sure you understand why in both cases. See if you and your team could use additional training to stay on top of the latest developments in marketing and sales, and be aware of what your competition is doing in these areas as well.

Once you know where you stand, you can chart a course for the new year. Set goals for the year and for individual quarters, and let your employees know what these goals are and why they’re important. Once employees know what the company is shooting for and why, they tend to be much more engaged in meeting those goals. (And tying employee bonuses to those goals doesn’t hurt, either.)

What might surprise you is how many of these areas Reliance Staffing & Recruiting can help you with. Partnering with the right staffing and recruiting firm can keep your workforce flexible, your operations efficient and your finances strong. Contact us today to learn how we can help make 2012 your best year yet.

Capelli went on to quote a recent report that stated that 52% of U.S. employers surveyed say they have difficulty filling positions because of talent shortages. Then he stated, “But the problem is an illusion.”

Strong words, and they provoked a strong reaction—almost 99% of the article’s commenters agreed with Capelli. He wrote a follow-up article, in which he said, “My favorite email came from somebody in a company that had 25,000 applicants for an engineering position and [the company's hiring] people said none of them were qualified.”

We agree with Capelli; in a blog post from back in July, we said, “This job market means that there will never be more qualified people applying for any position you may offer, so instead of assuming that the perfect candidate is ‘out there somewhere,’ assume that several of the best available candidates have applied.”

Capelli’s suggested solution to the problem: flexibility. “Finding candidates to fit jobs is not like finding pistons to fit engines, where the requirements are precise and can’t be varied,” he said. “Jobs can be organized in many different ways so that candidates who have very different credentials can do them successfully.”

We agree completely. Remember when you’re crafting a job description that the “ideal candidate” is an ideal, not a minimum bar that all potential applicants must clear.

Also, be judicious in your use of automated application software. If a credential or a level of experience is an absolute must-have (as in, a person without it would be unable to perform the job), then include that must-have in your online application as a filter. But if “three to five years of supervisory experience” is something you’d like an applicant to have, don’t make it a filter, because you might miss out on dozens of great applicants, all of whom could do the job easily, but who have only two years of supervisory experience.

And don’t overlook the importance of having a human being review each resume and conduct interviews. Obviously, when you’ve got 25,000 applicants, this might not be possible, but it is nonetheless preferable to have a hiring expert review resumes. Resume-reviewing software can find certain keywords, but only a person can look at a resume and discern patterns of building skills, challenging oneself and career development. Also, if a candidate uses different jargon than your software is looking for, you can miss out on an applicant who meets all your standards, but doesn’t use the right words.

What makes Reliance Staffing & Recruiting such a strong partner in human resources is the fact that our Placement Specialists (all with years of hiring experience) review each resume personally and interview each candidate personally. We find, check, test and ensure their qualifications so you can choose from people who can help your company rather than despairing that no auto-submitted resumes have cleared your hurdles. Contact us today to start finding qualified people.

One thing the article did get right is that jobs in the skilled trades are in high demand, as a generation of skilled workers retires. And positions in health care are definitely in demand, but instead of neurosurgeons or nuclear medicine specialists like MSNBC predicted, the greatest need right now is for physical and occupational therapists, as well as RNs.

Not only are lawyers not in demand, a new generation of fresh law-school graduates are finding work waiting tables and stocking shelves while wrestling with law-school debt. And forensic accounting, not derivatives trading, is the new hot job in finance.

So what does hiring actually look like in 2012?

Numbers-wise, it doesn’t look much different from hiring in 2011. CareerBuilder’s annual job forecast revealed that the percentages of employers who planned to hire regular full-time employees, who planned to decrease their workforce and who planned no changes were about the same this year as they were last year. About 23% planned to hire, 7% planned to reduce and 59% planned not to change their headcount. (The remaining 11% were unsure.)

It looks a bit like a resignation letter. According to CareerBuilder, about one-third of human resource managers nationwide reported an increase in voluntary turnover during 2011. Employers are worried that turnover will increase this year; 43% of them said they were concerned that their top talent would leave in 2012.

And it looks like contingent workers. Perhaps as a result of the turnover mentioned above, and perhaps as a natural choice to stay flexible during uncertain times, temporary workers are a major component of the workforce in 2012. While regular full-time hiring has lagged behind economic recovery, the hiring of temporary and contingent workers has surged ahead. Employers who aren’t sure what the future holds for interest rates, consumer demand or health care costs are hedging their bets by hiring only as their business needs it.

If you’re suspecting that your hiring picture for 2012 will look almost exactly like that—you’d like to keep headcount steady or maybe even hire, but you’re worried about turnover and uncertain about the future—we can help. Contact Reliance Staffing & Recruiting today to learn how we can keep your business strong and flexible in 2012.

January: New regulations under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) took effect. They strengthened the protections given to employees, applicants, trainees and former employees, and extended the degrees of family relation that are already protected by the act.

February: The “Facebook firing” case was settled out of court, with the employer agreeing to “revise its overly-broad rules to ensure that they do not improperly restrict employees from discussing their wages, hours and working conditions with co-workers and others while not at work, and that they would not discipline or discharge employees for engaging in such discussions.”

March: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released the final bipartisan regulations for the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act, the new disability law that was passed in 2008. These amendments focused mostly on employer compliance with ADA regulations. Also, the Supreme Court ruled that companies can be held liable for the discriminatory motives of influential employees, even if they don’t have the power to fire people directly. Citing the “cat’s paw” metaphor, the Court ruled that discrimination can basically be conducted by proxy.

April: New Jersey passed a law making it illegal for companies to advertise job openings that include wording to the effect that only applicants who currently have a job will be considered. In this economy, it still seems especially cruel to exclude applicants who might be a great fit for a job but have been laid off.

May: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that fitness-for-duty exams, when ordered after a pattern of behaviors that indicate a worker can’t complete their job duties safely. The writeup from Shaw Valenza at the link is a very comprehensive guide to applying this standard.

June: In what was probably the most publicized class-action suit all year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the 1.5 million women who have signed on to a class-action sex-discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart can’t, in fact, sue as a class. Thus far, the myriad individual cases against Wal-Mart that we predicted have yet to materialize.

July: Verizon agreed to pay a record $20 million to settle a suit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. According to the EEOC, Verizon had violated the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) by refusing to make exceptions to its “no fault” attendance plans to accommodate employees with disabilities.

August: The National Labor Relations Board has published a rule requiring all workplaces to post the National Labor Relations Act, including its information on employees’ rights to form and join unions. This was the start of the epic saga of the NLRA poster, which is still ongoing as we speak. Expect to hear more about the NLRA, the poster and the NLRB this year.

September: The NLRB released the NLRA poster and stated that businesses had to post it in all its 11×17 glory starting on November 14. Several business groups sued in response. Also, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the constitutionality of health care reform can’t be judged until it takes effect in 2014 and the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to review health care reform legislation by summer 2012.

October: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission brought a case against a Texas employer charging that morbid obesity can be considered a disability, based on how major life activities are affected.

November: More challenges to health care reform, as new Senate bill sought to repeal the component of the Affordable Care Act that would make health insurance companies pay taxes on their net premiums for fully insured customers. The tax would take effect in 2014, and would help fund the Affordable Care Act.

And finally, December. Here are the top legal stories of this past month:

Return to obesity: In Louisiana, a federal district court ruled that morbid obesity can qualify as a disability, regardless of the cause for said obesity. In this case, “morbid” obesity is defined as having a body weight that is more than twice the recommended body weight for one’s height. The original case was brought by an employee who was fired for limited mobility, despite having received stellar performance reviews. Sadly, she died due to complications of her weight and the EEOC continued with the appeal on behalf of her estate.

The Department of Labor proposed a change to the existing minimum-wage and overtime laws for in-home caregivers. When existing laws were drafted in the mid-70s, exemptions were established for long-term in-home care workers. However, as the U.S. population ages, more such workers are needed, and the DOL says that this proposed change will give these workers the wage protections they need. There’s a great writeup of the whole thing at the link.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that will interest anyone who’s unsure of whether or not they need to pay their workers overtime (you can also download our free eBook on the topic). According to the court, if an employer is not aware of an employee’s working overtime, the employer is not obligated to pay that employee overtime.

The EEOC began pondering the question of whether or not requiring a high school diploma for certain jobs is discriminatory. According to the agency, employers must provide a business justification for educational requirements, including high school diplomas; otherwise, people who couldn’t earn a diploma due to a disability would be screened out.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals surprised those familiar with the court’s usually conservative rulings when it ruled in favor of a transgender employee who was fired by her firm after she announced plans to undergo a gender transition. Remember: just as it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender, it’s also illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender nonconformity. Make sure your employee manual, legal counsel and all your employees are aware of this.

And speaking of discriminating on the basis of gender nonconformity, two men filed a suit against an auto-parts retailer that had employed them, charging that they were harassed and fired because they refused to conform to an especially sleazy gender role: the guy who hangs out in strip clubs and brothels a lot and tries to bully others into partaking of them with him. Given the details of the case, we feel that the two men are much better off away from that employer, and we’re certain that you’d never allow such shenanigans at your workplace.

So that’s 2011! We can’t wait to see what new legal hijinks await us in 2012.

You need to display the National Labor Relations Act poster… but not yet. Ordinarily, employment posters must be displayed by Jan. 31, but the NLRA poster doesn’t have to be put up until April 30. The delay is due to the controversy surrounding the National Labor Relations Board’s amendment of union election rules. Previously, a minimum of 25 days had to elapse between a workforce deciding to hold a union election and the election itself. Under the new rules, that waiting period could be as short as 7 days. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sued the NLRB to challenge these new rules, so there might be further delays down the road. Stay tuned…

The Social Security payroll tax will remain at 4.2 percent… for the next two months, anyway. In one of the most boneheaded moves on record, Congress voted to extend the 2-percent reduction in the SSI payroll tax, but only for two months. The bookkeeping, accounting, tax and paperwork nightmare that will result from this boggles the mind. We’re expecting more updates on this one, too.

Virginia’s FUTA tax rate has gone up. Virginia was one of 20 states (plus the Virgin Islands) that didn’t pay back the loans from the federal unemployment insurance fund to their state unemployment insurance funds. So our FUTA rate for 2011 is 1.1 percent for January through June and .9 percent for July through December. These taxes must be deposited by Jan. 31 using our dear friend, the Form 940.

The good news is that you have two more days to file your income taxes. There’s no ellipsis followed by a qualifier here; it’s just a good thing. Because April 15 is a Sunday and April 16 is a holiday in Washington, DC (Emancipation Day), you don’t have to file your income taxes until April 17. Maybe we’ll get a longer extension next year to make up for that whole two-month payroll tax ridiculousness.

The federal standard business mileage rate hasn’t changed. That’s not really “what’s new,” but this rate tends to change in January (except for last year, when it changed in July — what is with this Congress???) so you might be wondering if it’s changed this time around. It hasn’t; it’s still at 55.5 cents per mile. That’s the amount up to which employers can reimburse employees for mileage without the reimbursement having to be counted by the employee as income.

The adoption assistance benefit has changed; it’s gotten smaller. If your business offers adoption assistance benefits, the maximum amount of adoption-related expenses that can be excluded from a worker’s income is now $12,650 per child. (That’s a decrease of $710 from last year.)

Closer to home: Hampton Roads’ unemployment rate is falling. For the most recent month for which data is available, November 2011, the unemployment rate for this region was 6.7 percent. That’s .3 percent better than October 2011 and .5 percent better than November 2010. It’s still not stellar, but it’s better than many areas of the country, and as more and more companies hire someone, hopefully it’ll continue to drop.

And finally: Reliance Staffing & Recruiting’s new insurance certificates have been mailed. You should have received them by now, but you might not recognize the name on them. They’re filed as “Sarach Systems Inc, DBA Reliance Staffing & Recruiting.” So check your recent mail for your new certificate, and if you haven’t received one in a week or so, please let us know.

So that’s what’s new in 2012. What new developments are you most excited about… or most dreading? Let us know in the comments!

We’re taking the day off, and we hope you are too.

We’ll reopen tomorrow at 8 a.m., ready to take on 2012.

Happy New Year!